THE GUARDIAN HAS apologised for an editorial it published which said that former UK prime minister David Cameron felt a “privileged pain” over the death of his young son.
A section of the original article has since been removed with a footnote saying it “fell far short of our standards”.
Cameron has released a memoir and has given several media interviews in recent days in which he’s spoken about Brexit and his six-year premiership.
In response to his reappearance in British public life, The Guardian published an editorial last night in which it criticised “the suffering that his government caused by its austerity policies”.
It the piece, the editorial also spoke about Cameron’s experience with the NHS and said it may have been different had he “been trying to get the system to look after a dying parent rather than a dying son”.
The section of the article said that Cameron “has known pain and failure in his life but it has always been a limited failure and privileged pain”.
Cameron’s severely disabled son Ivan died at the age of six in 2009 and Cameron has regularly spoken about the care his son received in the NHS.
The Guardian’s editorial was criticised by journalists and politicians online with the UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequer Sajid Javid saying it “lacked in empathy, while righteously criticising others for lacking it”.
The article has since been amended to remove several paragraphs and an apology was added in a note at the end. The apology reads:
“This editorial was amended on 15 September 2019. The original version of this editorial posted online fell far short of our standards. It has now been amended, and we apologise completely.”
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